Help me, she silently pled. Please, God, help me.
Who was this man? She thought she’d known him, had seen him in town, but he’d changed. He was slimmer than she’d remembered, his hair thinner and dyed a different color. As if he was wearing a disguise…or had worn one for all the time that she’d known him.
Even his eyes were different. Cruel. Like glittering blue rocks set deep into his skull. The purest form of evil she’d ever witnessed.
She swallowed hard as she stared at the contraption in his hand. It was a dental appliance, a rubber dam with stainless-steel frame, equipment that would force a mouth open.
No! She began to panic, though her mind was mush. She had to get out of here! Now! Oh, God, there was no escape. She was bound to this chair. Over the music and the sound of her own frantic heartbeat, she heard a voice.
Stay calm, Lynnetta, I am with you.
Was it God’s voice she heard…yes? Or a hallucination from some weird psychedelic drug that was being piped into her bloodstream via the IV pierced into her wrist. She glanced down at her hand and for the first time noticed the bandage…a thick strip of gauze wound tight over her fingers, binding them together. What was that all about? There was a dark red stain…no doubt blood…on the gauze, seeping through from her ring finger…Yet she felt no pain and something about her hand seemed weird. Frantically attempting to wiggle her fingers, she failed. Probably because of whatever drug was flowing through the darned IV. There had to be something in the clear liquid that was keeping her mind fuzzy, dulling the pain.
So why was her hand bandaged? Had she struggled? Fought? She couldn’t remember. Didn’t have time to think.
He was coming closer.
Fear screamed through her bloodstream.
Trust in me. The Father’s voice again, trying to calm her, hoping that her faith would sustain her.
Please, Father, have mercy, she prayed, closing her eyes as she felt Lucifer’s hot breath upon her cold face. She thought of the martyrs who had gone before her, the fearless souls who had accepted God’s fate. For some reason, The Father was testing her, but she would fear not…He would deliver her. She was certain of it.
She thought of springtime and her dear, departed parents, then of Derwin, a hard-driven man, but a man who had loved her…and she thought of her son, Ian, not yet an adult, tempted by all that was available to youth these days. Be with them, dear Lord, she prayed, and despite whatever torture this evil incarnation of Satan had planned for her, she would never lose her faith. Never! Soon, she would be home. Soon, she would be with Him. She, like those before her, like Jesus who had suffered on the cross, would endure the agony on earth to accept her eternal reward.
I’ll be with you soon. Sweet Jesus, I’ll be with you soon.
Her eyes still shut, she complied as the monster roughly forced the rubber dam into her mouth, didn’t so much as squeak as he tightened it so that her jaw was opened painfully wide, her lips pulled harshly back, her tongue and teeth at his mercy. She flinched only slightly when she heard the hum of the drill, but closed her mind to everything other than her prayer.
Our Father, who art in heaven…
The drill squealed against her teeth, shrieking wildly as the scent of burning enamel filled her nostrils, and she knew it was only a matter of seconds before the ungodly drill bit hit a nerve.
CHAPTER 36
Technically, it wasn’t breaking and entering.
He had a key.
The key Wes Allen had given Carolyn years before, and it was now in the front pocket of Shane Carter’s jeans.
But you don’t have a search warrant. Anything you find will be thrown out of court. You’ll lose your job.
Carter had wrestled with that decision for nearly four days, ever since the night Lynnetta Swaggert had been abducted. He had hoped to gather enough evidence against Wes, to get the damned search warrant, but then Amanda Pratt and her boss, the D.A., hadn’t been impressed with the fact that Wes Allen dabbled in art, knew Jenna, had bought or rented all of her films on DVD or tape. And Wes had no link to Leo Ruskin, the Leary-esque poet from L.A. who seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
Even Shane had known the evidence was thin at best, and his gut instinct didn’t count for much. Besides, there was that little matter of a personal vendetta Amanda Pratt had brought up.
“Isn’t this guy a friend of yours…oh!” Sitting on the edge of her desk, legs swinging, she’d snapped her fingers as if struck by a sudden bolt of insight. “Wait a minute…this was the guy that had an affair with your wife, right? The one you, in a fit of rage, swore to kill? Isn’t this the reason they suggested you go to counseling, to deal with your grief and rage? I think this little incident nearly cost you your job.”
“That was a long time ago,” Carter had said.
“And they always say something to the effect that revenge tastes best when served up cold.”
She hadn’t budged, so here he was, hours later, parked on an old logging road a quarter of a mile from Wes’s farmhouse, hankering for a cigarette and contemplating breaking the law and losing everything he’d worked for all his lif
e.
Because of a gut instinct.